Evolve

Big Day 1 Patch Coming to Evolve

Save 3 GB of hard drive space to allow Evolve to, er... evolve.

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One of the most anticipated co-op games of 2015, Evolve, will be releasing on consoles and PC tomorrow, and we couldn't be happier. Despite the extra time needed to get the game running as smoothly as possible, there will be a Day 1 patch coming.

While many players who've played the game already have been praising it's highly polished gameplay and mechanics, there's always room for improvement and Turtle Rock is aiming for the best quality product possible. Player feedback submitted through forums, along with gamer participation in the Open Beta weekend in January or the Technical Test provided Turtle Rock Studios with very important game data. To accommodate this, the developer has issued a 3 GB patch with necessary tweaks to help balance the game on Day 1.

Most notable of the change, there has been increased game performance and optimization of the multiplayer servers for Evolve. At least for myself, I was having lots of bandwidth and network issues trying to actually get into a game with a full player roster during the Technical Test. Turtle Rock has taken measures to improve on the game's load times and increasing performance on the game's system.

Patch will also touch upon the special Evolve Hunters Quest app. Only recently revealed by the developers, this companion app might look just like a simple Match-3 puzzle combat game on your phone. However, this app will also allow players to connect to their Evolve accounts on my2K and do things such as earn experience for characters on the go or watch overhead match replays! Download the app for free on iOS, Android, and/or Windows Phone today!

Another item to mention are some of the Elite Skins for Monsters that were only obtainable during the Alpha & Beta testing. These assets that are now able to be earned through playing the game, buying them, or playing the mobile app game, thanks to the requests by the community!

Finally, we have to mention the changes to balancing. While there is much fine tuning going into both the Hunters and Monster's strengths and weaknesses, there has been an ample amount going into the Wraith in particular. The Evolve blog stated it all in the post Open Beta Q&A that was uploaded:

EVOLVE: Let’s go through some of the things that you’re changing for the final game. Just as an example, walk us through what’s in store for Wraith.

CA: I’m going to back up for a second here. In the Big Alpha, the Kraken had a 70% win ratio. We made a few key adjustments and during the Beta he was at 52%, which we are perfectly happy with. So we know we can make the right changes according to the data we get from these tests.

We introduced the Wraith in the Beta and saw that she needed similar adjustments. This was her first big playtest and she had a 71.1% win ratio. We made adjustments and now expect to launch the game with all three monsters very near the 50% mark. We couldn’t have done this without the communities help!!!

Coming out of the Open Beta, here are our goals:

- Make the Wraith easier to track. Even good Hunters have a hard time keeping tabs on Wraith because she can move so far while cloaked.

- Make the Decoy less spammy. It doesn’t take any skill to keep punching that ability button and let the AI Decoy go to work. We want to increase the “cost” of using it so that people use it more sparingly/strategically.

- Bring Supernova down a notch. It is okay if it’s her primary damage dealer, but it felt a little on the buff side for a while internally and we saw it prove true during the Beta.

- Make Abduction a little easier to land. It’s a really fun ability to use and it was underutilized during the beta.

- Make Warp Blast a threat. This should be a straight forward damage dealer that also has some nice mobility utility.

And here’s what is changing for Wraith:

- Wraith can no longer warp while cloaked. If she does, the cloak wears off and the Decoy vanishes (just like when you melee attack). This means that when she cloaks, she normally won’t get far and it opens the door for skilled players to do smart things like break line of sight before warping away.

- Decoy takes 30% longer to cool down. This immediately makes it 30% less spammy and hopefully results in players saving it for the more opportune moments.

- Supernova damage reduced by 10%. Not a huge change, but it will make a measurable difference.

- Abduction radius increased by .5 meters (now 3.5). This will make it a little more forgiving.

- Warp Blast radius increased by .5 meters (now 8.5). Increasing the radius here has proven a great way to increase the damage output in the past as players are able to hit their targets more often.